createMPLS

The Minnesota High Tech Association predicts that by 2025 the state will have nearly 200,000 tech jobs. Yet, many of Minnesota’s low-income and minority students – who represent nearly 40% of the state’s student population – do not have equal access to the resources and training needed to meet this demand.

We partner with like-minded community organizations to bring quality, hands-on STEM learning to inner-city Minneapolis youth—especially young women and students from racial minority backgrounds in order to bridge skills and experience gaps, and help more students succeed in higher education and today’s job market.

Our programs continue to see measurable success as participants acquire new skills, advance through team competitions, become mentors for junior peers, and grow in their interest and engagement in STEM. Students in our robotics lab arrive to class early, ask for homework, and request to meet more often; and, graduates of our programs serve as volunteers and ambassadors for createMPLS, Technovation, and other STEM programs. Demand for our programs is growing, and we continue to add new classes and teams every year.

We primarily run Coding & Robotics Learning Labs (Grades K-8th), which have served over 250 students. Additionally, we have had six FIRST LEGO League Teams (Grades 4-9), two FIRST LEGO League Jr. Teams (Grades K-3), and four Technovation Challenge Teams (female students in grades 4-8 and 9-12). To encourage STEM education outside of the classroom, we also provide take-home technology kits for students and their families. Our programs are designed to help K-12 students build foundational technology skills, learn teamwork and problem solving, and become positive difference makers in the community.

By partnering with Hope Academy, Urban Ventures, and Ace in the City (at Risen Christ School) in Minneapolis, we aim to remove barriers to access and inclusion by offering these K-12 programs at no cost to the students, parents, or school, and in the place where they already attend school/programming. We also rely heavily on volunteer support, in-kind donations, and free curriculum (provided by Technovation, LEGO Education, and Code.org), which allows us to operate on a very lean budget. And, thanks to the investment of our board of directors, successful fundraising events, and our growing network of recurring donors, we continue to make significant progress towards long-term sustainability.

Our K-3 robotics program is operating at capacity, and we have a waitlist of 52 students who wish to participate. In the spring of 2020, we aim to meet this demand by creating a robotics learning lab that serves those students. The students will work with iPads, LEGO Simple Machines, and LEGO WeDo 2.0 robots under the guidance and direction of our executive director, program manager, and coaches; and they will follow LEGO Education curriculum that includes lesson plans for science, engineering, maker, and computational thinking. We would also like to offer 4th-8th graders additional learning labs at beginner and intermediate levels.

All of these new programs will serve K-12 youth underserved students in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Over 75% of students at one of our host sites are African, African American, Latino or Native American. And, more than 70% qualify for free and reduced price lunches. All of the students at another site are on free or reduced lunches and 95% of the students are Latino. And at our third site, all families are living under the poverty line. The majority of these students live in Minneapolis, and many of them will be the first in their families to graduate from high school and attend college. Parents and guardians often have little to no technology skills, preventing them from engaging with their children in STEM education at home; and challenges with work schedules, language barriers, and limited finances often prevent them from enrolling their children in out-of-school time programs. These programs will also help students learn teamwork, fundraising, marketing, presentation, and professionalism as they train and compete against other teams. Furthermore, this team will keep the students engaged in STEM learning as they explore higher education and potential career paths in tech.

By continuing to offer these coding and robotics programs at no charge to the students or the host sites, and in the place where they are already attending, we will enable more low-income and minority students to develop the STEM, business, and leadership skills needed to succeed in higher education and employment. In the long-term, we believe that this will also lead to greater diversity, inclusion, and equity in the tech industry.